After an elderly man jumped from New York's World Building in 1911, his death made the front page of the New York Times: "World Dome Suicide a Famous War Spy." Although British expatriate and former Pinkerton agent Pryce Lewis had slipped into obscurity, as Gavin Mortimer reveals, the final headline did him justice, speaking to the dramatic, vitally important, and largely unknown role he had played in the Civil War.

"In researching his previous book, Chasing Icarus, Mortimer encountered an obituary for a Union spy about whom no biography exists.... Hatching a zany idea, Pinkerton had Lewis masquerade as an English aristocrat on tour. Playing fey bonhomie to the hilt, Lewis circulated among Confederate officers and gathered military information that emboldened the Union force into making a victorious attack. Sequencing through Lewis' subsequent wartime assignments recounted in a postwar, never-published memoir, Mortimer embroiders them with ancillary sources to deliver a vibrant depiction of espionage in the first years of the Civil War. It captures the improvisation and tense risks of spying (Lewis suffered in a Richmond prison), sympathizes with Lewis' futile pursuit of recognition for his contributions to the Northern cause, and yields a must-have for the Civil War shelf."—Booklist